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Yesterday night on the Conan O’Brien show, Sylvester Stallone was one of the guests. I really like him (Stallone) a lot, he is one of my favorite actors. Not because of his acting abilities but because of his personality as an actor and the fact that he made the movies Rambo and Cobra, both favorites of mine. So yesterdays show was extremely funny, Conan was able to get the best out of Stallone, he joked about Rocky and stuff, plus asked if Rambo would make a come back and surprisingly Stallone suggested he might. Conan made a good point by suggesting Rambo now has a new enemy to fight, Al Qaeda. Stallone joked saying that Rambo is old now and probably won’t travel that far from home, he said Rambo would probably just drive down to Mexico and fight someone there. Stallone is a really funny guy, watching him yesterday made me feel like watching Cobra again. Anyway here is a recent picture of him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Similar to the flickr site from the other day, this site spells words using thumbnails from Amazon.com. It works differently from the flickr one so its interesting to try. Here is the link.

I went for a long walk in Salmiya tonight and found a kid selling some DVDs. I don’t usually buy of these street kids since the quality of the DVD recording is usually terrible. I still decided to check out the dvds though and to my surprise I found Bumfights volume 1. What is Bumfights? Well these guys went around paying homeless people to fight each other and do stupid pranks like set their hair on fire or pull their teeth out using pliers all on film. When the dvd first got released it caused some controversy and thats when I found out about it. Its not a major movie release or anything so I was surprised to find it here on the streets. Its amazing how you can find the strangest stuff in Kuwait sometimes.

Anyone noticed that Nat hasn’t been posting here? I should just kick her out of this blog.

I am pro Sony PSP. I definetly think its a way cooler machine then the GameBoy DS which is big and clunky. The Sony PSP games are way cooler and the connectivity features of the PSP are also a lot cooler. In a recent comparison in WIRED magazine between the PSP and DS, the PSP ofcourse came out on top. But today I read an argument about the PSP that I found interesting. The PSP is better then the DS, we know that, but how much better it could have been is the issue here.

Here is the rant I read taken from Joystiq:

The PSP’s battery is a topic of huge debate. Depending on use, a single charge can last anywhere between 6 hours all the way down to 1.5, depending on which features the handheld utilizes. Why is this?

I seriously ask, should you as a consumer and gamer, have to juggle volume and brightness to eke out a bit more play time? Should game developers be asked to manage the battery consumption or should that be an issue for the developer of the system? Basically, shouldn’t the system, when used at maximum capacity, have a reasonable battery life?

If Sony hadn’t tried to force an optical drive in the PSP, there would be much more room in the system for a larger capacity battery. Load times would be nonexistent. The system would be less fragile and prone to breaking due to mechanical failure. The system wouldn’t have the shuriken UMD ‘feature’. Overall, it would be a much better system. Sony’s reliance on the optical disc has resulted in a worse product than could have otherwise been built.

Why? Why did Sony insist on putting an optical drive in the PSP when it had to compromise on so many other issues? Simple, Sony wants to sell you movies and music on the UMD. They want you to buy a UMD movie for $20. That UMD movie has 1/3 the resolution of a similar priced DVD. That UMD movie can’t be played back on a TV. That UMD movie does not have additional DVD features, menus, subtitles or other cool things you may find on a DVD. Sony makes nearly 100% profit on movies and music.

Sony sacrificed the PSP in order to make money off of movies.

Now, before you start calling names, I’m not laying hate on the PSP. Nice screen. Sleek, shiny case. Good graphics. Nice.

I look at the decisions made by Sony and I see decisions that are absolute trash for gamers but great for lining Sony’s pockets with money. I feel frustrated knowing the PSP could have been so much more if they would simply step up to the plate and decide to knock a home run out of the park instead of walking to first base on the back of movies and music. The missed potential for a system with an 8 hour battery, fully loaded with wi-fi on, makes me weep.

4 hours isn’t enough. 2 hours is a downright embarrassment. As gamers, we should demand more.

Today is the first day of the 4×4 event at Marina Mall. I passed by yesterday night and they were still setting things up. Basically various car manufactures are going to be displaying their 4X4’s plus on the beach there is a 4X4 offroad course with little hills and stuff. I heard you will be able to test drive any car for free on this course including an H2. We will have to wait and see if this turns out to be true or not. The event is from March 8th till the 18th if I remember correctly.

Do you know who originally created the iPod? If you guessed Steve Jobs then you are absolutely wrong. The father of the ipod is an engineer called Tony Fadell. Another interesting fact is that Tony Fadell is a Lebanese citizen. I contacted Tony Fadell last year and I had a nice chat with him via email. He turned out to be a very cool guy. I asked him if I could send him my iPod mini so that he could autograph it for me. He told me I didn’t need to and then fedexed me an autographed blue ipod mini skeleton. So anyway thought I would showoff share a picture of my autographed blue mini with you.

From the superficial: “Quentin Tarantino has signed on to direct the May 19th season finale of CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”. Tarantino also came up with the episode’s storyline, which will put one of the key members of the CSI team in danger. Details are sketchy, but it might also involve a bunch of guys in suits doing a lot of shooting and maybe a kung fu master doing kung fu. And a sodomy scene. There’ll definitely be a sodomy scene.”

OK, I left the office with everyone else around 10:30AM and got to the marina near the Sultan Center restaurant at around 10:45AM. I saw the yacht and it was pretty big. But I also noticed that while the boat was parked inside the marina in very calm waters it was still bouncing up and down and sideways. So I decided not to get on the yacht. No way you know. If it was bouncing while parked I am sure it was gonna be bouncing a lot more out in the open sea. So now I am back at the office, I am the only one here and I am gonna catch up on some work. I would rather be stuck here in the office then be out at sea.

I was reading Puss-In-Boots blog and she said she loves to collect rare stuff. But she didn’t say what stuff she collected. I know Nibaq likes to collect toy figurines, but what else does everyone collect? I personally collect 2 things. Wired Magazines (I have every issue since 5.01 and my oldest is 3.12), and also videogame systems. So since today is cleaning Firday, I decided to take out and shoot all my systems and then wipe the dust off before I put them back into the cabinets. Below is a list of all the systems I currently own and they link to their pictures.

Atari Jaguar
Atari Lynx
Coleco Vision
Commodore 64
Commodore VIC 20
Dingoo A320
Game & Watch – Chef
Game & Watch – Donkey Kong Jr.
Game & Watch – Mario Bros.
Microsoft Xbox
Microsoft Xbox 360
MSX2 (Sakhr)
NEO-GEO AES
Nintendo 64
Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo Gameboy SP
Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo Wii
Panasonic 3DO
Sega Dreamcast
Sega Gamegear
Sony Playstation 1
Sony Playstation 2
Sony Playstation 3
Sony PSP
Speak & Spell
Super Nintendo
Super Simon

I still have a couple of systems I would like to own, mainly a Nintendo Virtual Boy, a Sega Nomad and a Sega Saturn.

Before I got married and moved into my own apartment, I didn’t have any room to display the stuff in my old room so I had them all under my bed. Now though since I have my own place I have them all displayed in my cabinet (1,2) with the boxes and some accessories in the drawers and closests (1,2,3,4).

So what do you guys collect?

Passed by Salmiya’s Jewels (Jawharet Salmiya) yesterday night for dinner. Its a Shawerma place I frequent often because of the lack of other decent Shawerma places in the area. The Shawerma place is located on a corner of the building next to the Lime Light boutique in Salem Al Mubarek street. Its not a big place but the Shawerma guy is very friendly and nice. They don’t have meat Shawerma only chicken. They give you two options for the bread, you can either have a hot dog bun which is my favorite or the regular bread. Price of the Shawerma is 250fils and they sell cans of softdrinks for 100fils. They have Shani available. The garlic is pretty good and strong and be-worn, it will leave your breath stinky for the next couple of hours unless taken care of. The place although doesnt look it, is pretty safe and clean to eat at. I have eaten there numerous of times and never gotten sick. There is a small seating place outside but its not very comfortable. The place doesnt have much competition around if any. The closest Shawerma places to him are Kurdo which is down the road towards McDonalds, and this other unknown place in an alley accross the street from Marina Mall. Over all the place gets a 3 out of 5. Its a decent score for a shawerma place in this range.

Here are two pictures of the place:
Picture 1
Picture 2

Thanks to BusyNow for the heads up. Amazon.com is now allowing you to preorder your Sony PSP value pack for a price of $250 (KD73). The value pack includes a 32MB Memory Stick Duo, headphones with a remote control, a battery pack, and a movie/music/video game sample UMD. Sony is also tossing in a special UMD-version of the film Spider-Man 2 with the first one million PSP Value Packs sold. So preorder your PSP now, this is the link.

This is my order:
1 of Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) Value Pack
Sony Computer Entertainment; @ $249.99 each

1 of PSP Ridge Racer
Namco; @ $39.99 each

——-
Item(s) Subtotal: $289.98
Shipping & Handling: $5.48
Total Before Tax: $295.46
Tax: $25.48

TOTAL: $320.94

Update: Amazon has stopped the preordering. It seems the first batch of PSPs on Amazon have already been preordered.

How could I forget to post about this. Apple announced new iPods today as expected. The new iPods include:

iPod Mini
– New 6GB Model. $249
– 4GB Model. $199
– Up to 18hrs Battery Life
– 4 Colors. No more gold, and the pink, blue and green are still there but they are now more vibrant. Silver still the same.

iPod Photo
– 30GB. $349
– 60GB. $449

20GB iPods ($299) remain. The 40GB iPod appears to have been discontinued.

So sadly, no extremely new colors for the ipod mini, and no color screen also. For more details visit Apple.com.

I passed by Mac & More today in Galleria 2000. The place was closed but the storefront is all glass so I could see what was inside. A couple of things grabbed my attention. First, the store has a large sign-age outside saying “Apple Center”. Then on the far right of that sign in small it says “Mac & More”. So ummm.. if the store is called Mac & More shouldn’t that be the largest and highlighted? Secondly the place does not match the official Apple Stores design. Thirdly they are using a red colored apple logo..?! Finally the place is tiny! Like ultra small. My pakistani barbershop is bigger.. and i am not being sarcastic here! I looked inside I could see 1 G5 powermac with an Apple display, 2 imacs, and a bunch of ipods on the shelves. I wasn’t able to see any powerbooks or ibooks nor any shuffles and mac mini’s. They seemed to have some accessories like the itrips and some skinz, but other then that nothing special. I was expecting “more” and didn’t get to see that. I am not a businessman or anything, but I personally think the store is gonna fail. It isn’t offering anything that the other retailers aren’t. If the store opened last year maybe it would have been better, but now that Apple products are being sold at Eureka and Virgin.. I don’t see how this store is gonna do any good. I have some pictures below which I quickly took from outside without the security catching me.

Mac & More 1
Mac & More 2
Mac & More 3

A bunch of people here at work are saying they heard an explosion today morning.. 5 minutes before I came in. That would mean the explosion happened around 9AM when I was in my car listening to Heart Shaped Box really loud. Anyone else heard this explosion?

PS: The sirens have been blasting for the past 10 minutes. They are test sirens… right?